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Contributing to arcp

Thanks for your interest in improving the Python SDK for ARCP. This document covers how to report issues, propose changes, and get a change merged.

By participating you agree to the Code of Conduct.

Where changes belong

ARCP is two things in two places, and a change belongs to exactly one of them:

  • The protocol — the wire format, message semantics, lease rules, error taxonomy, feature flags. These live in the specification repository. If your idea changes what goes on the wire or what a conformant runtime must do, it is a spec change — open it there, not here. This SDK implements the spec; it does not define it.
  • This SDK — how the protocol is expressed idiomatically in Python: bugs, ergonomics, performance, missing-but-specified features, docs, tests. Those belong here.

When in doubt, open an issue here and we'll redirect if it's really a protocol question.

The golden rule: conform, don't extend

A change to this SDK must keep it a faithful client of ARCP v1.1 (draft). Concretely:

  • Don't invent wire behavior. No envelope fields, event kinds, error codes, or feature flags that the spec doesn't define. If you need one, it's a spec proposal first.
  • Negotiate honestly. Only advertise a feature flag in session.hello once the SDK actually implements it. The feature matrix in the README must match what the code negotiates — a row marked Supported is a promise.
  • Respect the semantics. Sequence numbers stay gap-free and monotonic; LEASE_EXPIRED and BUDGET_EXHAUSTED stay non-retryable; the effective feature set is the intersection of client and runtime advertisements. Tests must not paper over a semantic the spec requires.
  • Stay layered. This SDK controls runtimes. It does not expose tools (that's MCP) or export telemetry (that's OpenTelemetry). PRs that blur those layers will be asked to move the logic out.

Reporting bugs

Open an issue with: the SDK version and Python version, the runtime you connected to, a minimal reproduction (the smallest program that triggers it), what you expected, and what happened. A failing test is the best possible bug report. Wire-level traces (the envelopes exchanged) help enormously for protocol behavior — redact any auth.token or provisioned-credential value first.

Proposing a change

For anything beyond a small fix, open an issue describing the problem before writing code, so we can agree on the approach. Small, focused PRs review faster than large ones; if a change is big, say so early and we'll help break it down.

Development setup

The SDK targets Python 3.11+ and is developed with uv as the package manager (the lockfile is uv.lock). Install uv, then clone and sync the project — that creates a .venv/ with all runtime and dev dependencies pinned to the lock.

git clone https://github.com/agentruntimecontrolprotocol/python-sdk.git
cd python-sdk
uv sync --frozen --all-extras --dev

Optionally enable the local pre-commit gates (CI is the canonical gate; this is a convenience):

uv run pre-commit install
uv run pre-commit install --hook-type pre-push

Tests and conformance

Two layers must pass before a PR merges:

  • Unit tests — this SDK's own suite:

    uv run pytest

  • Conformance — the SDK's behavior against the reference runtime. New protocol-facing code (session negotiation, event sequencing, lease handling, error mapping) needs a test that exercises the real exchange, not a mock that assumes the answer. The in-tree conformance harness lives at tests/conformance/ and runs as part of uv run pytest; the end-to-end suites under tests/e2e/ drive the reference runtime over the in-process MemoryTransport and over WebSocketTransport on a loopback socket — no external server or environment variable is required. The full conformance matrix this SDK is measured against is published at docs/conformance.md.

CI runs both on every PR. A PR that changes which feature flags the SDK negotiates must also update the README feature matrix in the same change.

Coding standards

This repo uses Ruff for linting and formatting and Pyright for type-checking. Run them locally before pushing:

uv run ruff check .
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run pyright

Match the surrounding code. Public API changes need doc comments and an entry in the changelog. Prefer clarity over cleverness in a library others build on.

Commit and pull-request conventions

  • Write focused commits with present-tense, imperative subjects (add result_chunk reassembly, not added / adds).

  • Reference the issue a PR closes (Closes #123).

  • Keep the PR description honest about scope and any spec sections touched.

  • Rebase on the default branch and ensure CI is green before requesting review.

  • Sign off your commits to certify the Developer Certificate of Origin:

    git commit -s -m "your message"

Releases

Releases are cut by maintainers. Publishing is automated: pushing a v* tag triggers the publish.yml workflow, which builds the wheel with hatch and uploads it to PyPI via OIDC trusted publishing. The SDK is versioned with semantic versioning independently of the protocol version it speaks; a protocol version bump is noted in the changelog when the negotiated ARCP version changes.

License

By contributing, you agree that your contributions are licensed under the project's Apache-2.0 license.